1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to controlling media content playback, and in particular, to a method, system, apparatus, article of manufacture, and computer program product for a user interface (UI) component used to control and navigate media content playback, bookmark a frame in media content, and prevent a bypass of advertisements during the playback of media content.
2. Description of the Related Art
Touchscreen devices are often used to view and/or control the viewing of media content. For example, a tablet computer (e.g., an iPad™) or smartphone may be used to watch a video, play a slide show, listen to audio, etc. Similarly, a tablet computer, smartphone, or other touchscreen device may serve as a remote control to control the viewing of media content that is displayed on another device (e.g., on a television, a display device of a computer, a camera display, a monitor, etc.). Unfortunately, prior art systems fail to provide an understandable, intuitive, easy-to-use tool/widget/graphical UI that enables such control. To better understand the problems of the prior art, a description of prior art media content controls may be useful.
FIG. 1 illustrates a prior art video control playback UI (e.g., on an iPad™). Once the user has initiated playback of video content, the UI 100 is displayed. The actual video content is displayed in video playback area 102 with the video playback controls displayed in areas 104 and 106. The video playback controls may be shown or hidden by tapping on video playback area 102. The user may scale the video to fit the screen by double-tapping the video or selecting icon 108. The playhead 110 identifies the current playback location of the video clip/content. Playhead 110 can be dragged along linear scrubber bar 112 to skip forward or back thereby identifying a particular frame/time within a video clip. In FIG. 1, the playhead 110 is located at 10:39 of the clip and there is 1:29:18 remaining left of the video clip/content.
To start over from the beginning of the video clip/content, the playhead 110 may be dragged along the scrubber bar 112 all the way to the left or the user may select icon 114 (if there are no chapters in the video). To skip to the next or previous chapter, the user may select/tap icons 114/116 respectively. To rewind or fast-forward, the user may touch and hold icons 114/116, or may drag playhead 110 left or right. The user can move their finger toward the bottom of screen 100 as the user drags for finer control. The user can play/pause the playback of video content by touching icon 118. Scrubber bar 120 may be used to control the volume using volume control head 122.
As illustrated in FIG. 1, the playback controls 108-122 are linear and require the user to lift his/her hand and drag one or more fingers across a screen 100 in a linear manner to identify a playback location and/or adjust the volume. Further, the playback scrubber bar 112 and volume control scrubber bar 120 are not integrated into a single interface component and must therefore be separately manipulated using hand/finger gestures in different areas of the screen 100.
In view of the above, what is needed is a touchscreen UI component for media content playback controls that is intuitive, easy-to-use, and conforms to the natural gestures of a user's hand digits/phalanges.